The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(28)

It felt an awful lot like a hint of something more.

Maura watched Gansey carefully. Blue suspected this was not because of anything Gansey was saying but because she was waiting for him to take a drink of whatever horrid potion she had steeping in that cup in front of him.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Blue said, settling on a yogurt. It had fruit on the bottom, but she’d eat around it. She threw herself into a chair at the table. “You’re going to say, ‘Well, then, don’t take Blue with you.’”

Her mother flipped a hand like, If you knew, why’d you ask?

Gansey said, “What? Oh, because Blue makes things louder?”

Crossly, Blue realized that Gansey had now called her Jane so often that it felt strange to hear him say her real name.

“Yes,” Maura replied. “But I actually wasn’t going to say that, even though it’s true. I was going to say that this place must have rules. Everything involved in energy and spirit has rules — we just don’t always know them. So it looks unpredictable to us. But it’s really just because we’re idiots. Are you sure you want to go back?”

Gansey took a drink of his healing tea. Maura’s chin jutted as she observed the lump of it heading down his throat. His face remained precisely the same and he said absolutely nothing, but after a moment, he made a gentle fist of his hand and thumped his breastbone.

“What did you say that was good for?” he asked politely. His voice was a little odd until he cleared his throat.

“General wellness,” Maura said. “Also, it’s supposed to manage dreams.”

“My dreams?” he asked.

Maura raised a very knowing eyebrow. “Who else’s would you be managing?”

“Mm.”

“Also, it helps with legal matters.”

Gansey had been swallowing as much of his fancy coffee as he could possibly manage without breathing, but he stopped and put the bottle on the table with a clink. “Do I need help with legal matters?”

Maura shrugged. “Ask a psychic.”

“Mom,” Blue said. “Seriously.” To Gansey, she prompted, “Cabeswater.”

“Oh, right. Well, no one else has to go with me,” he said. “But the incontrovertible fact remains that I am looking for a mystical king on a ley line and it is a mystical forest on a ley line. I can’t discount that coincidence. We can look elsewhere, but I think Glendower’s there. And I don’t want to waste time now that the ley line’s awake. I feel like time’s running out.”

“Are you sure you still want to find him?” Maura asked.

Blue already knew this question was irrelevant. Without cutting her gaze over to him, she already knew what she would see. She would see a rich boy dressed like a mannequin and coiffed like a newscaster — but his eyes were like the dreaming pool in Cabeswater. He hid the insatiable wanting well, but now that she’d seen it once, she couldn’t stop seeing it. But he wouldn’t be able to explain it to Maura.

And he would never really have to explain it to Blue.

It was his something more.

Very formally, he said, “Yes, I do.”

“It could kill you,” Maura said.

Then there was the awkward moment that arrives when two thirds of the people in the room know that the other third is supposed to die in fewer than nine months, and the person who is meant to die is not one of the ones in the know.

“Yes,” Gansey said. “I know. I’ve done it once before. Die, I mean. Do you not like the fruit bits? That’s the best part.” He directed this last statement to Blue, who gave him her mostly empty yogurt cup. He was very clearly done with talking about death.

Maura sighed, giving up, just as Calla stormed into the kitchen. Calla was not angry. She merely stormed whenever possible. She ripped open the fridge and tore a pudding cup from it.

As Calla spun with the hated store-brand pudding in her hand, she shook it at Gansey and thundered, “Just remember that Cabeswater is a video game that everyone in it has been playing for a lot longer than you. They all know where to get the level ups.”

She plowed from the room. Maura followed her.

“Well,” said Gansey.

“Yes,” agreed Blue. After a second, she pushed back her chair to follow Maura, but Gansey stretched a hand out.

“Wait,” he said in a low voice.

“Wait what?”

With a glance out toward the hall and reading room, he said, “Um, Adam.”

Instantly, Blue thought of Adam losing his temper. Her cheeks warmed. “What about him?”

Gansey rubbed a thumb over his lower lip. It was a pensive habit, performed so frequently that it was surprising he had anything left to cover his bottom teeth. “Have you told him about that no-kissing curse thing?”

If Blue had thought her cheeks were warm before, it was nothing compared to the blaze raging in them now. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

He looked delicately aggrieved. “You told me not to!”

“Well, no. I haven’t.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

The kitchen didn’t seem very private, and they’d both unconsciously leaned as close as possible to keep their voices from carrying. Blue hissed, “It’s all very under control. I don’t really want to be discussing this with you, of all people!”